Research expertise: race, Indigeneity, settler colonialism, customary law, autonomy, and social movements

Luis Sánchez-López, UCI assistant professor of Chicano/Latino studies, pursues research on Indigeneity, settler colonialism, customary law, autonomy, race and social movements. He’s particularly interested in how Indigeneity is constructed historically in different contexts and places. He’s working on a book manuscript, The Cost of Inclusion: Zapotec Pueblos and the Making of Settler Colonial Nationalism in Oaxaca, 1848-1932, which examines how criollos (white Mexicans) crafted settler colonialism in the state with the largest Indigenous population in Mexico. Other work has been published in Latino Studies and is forthcoming in Ethnohistory.

 

 

Sánchez-López earned his bachelor’s in history from UCLA and his Ph.D. in history from UC San Diego. He comes to UCI following a two-year Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. He’s a member of the Critical Latinx Indigeneities Working Group and co-founder of the Oaxacan College Initiative, a community-based project that aims to increase the number of Indigenous Oaxacan students in college. He’s excited to be joining UCI and staying in southern California where he hopes to engage with the region’s Indigenous Oaxacan population and other Indigenous migrants from Mexico and Central America. Through his professorship in the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies, he’s looking forward to connecting with faculty and students interested in learning more about Indigenous peoples from Latin America.